How’re ya now?
I love that little phrase. It comes from southern Ontario where I live and has been turned into an ongoing joke on one of my favourite shows about rural Ontario culture and friendship, called Letterkenny. The ritual answer to this question is “Notso bad ‘n’you?” or “Good ‘n’you?”
These days though, whew. We need another response.
I haven’t blogged since June. I feel like I’ve been working harder and more intensively than I have at any time during my consulting career. I have clients in different parts of the world so some days I’m up at 4am, or on calls late into the evening. I’m getting jetlagged without leaving my home.
I’m noticed a deep tiredness in my brain not just from the screen time, but from the intensity of maintaining concentration when my conversation partners are small squares in an undifferentiated mass. I think when I’m working with groups I tend to focus on one person at a time, and there is never a time when I am making eye contact with 25 people at once. Mentally, I’m forgetting things. My short term memory is full of holes. As one client said yesterday, I work a whole day online, turn off my computer and can’t remember a single thing I have done. The abrupt nature of the transition between states is jarring. We are not made for this, and I’m not sure we are adjusting, but rather just wearing ourselves down.
Everything takes longer, there is more anxiety about the future, everything feels more high stakes, maybe because no one really knows what to do, what’s going to happen, or how to make it through this moment into whatever is coming next.
Many folks I work with are feeling this same fatigue and anxiety, somehow familiar and also strange. And this isn’t REALLY suffering at all.
I am working. My job has simply moved online. I continue to be paid for my work. I live in a place that has been minimally touched by COVID-19, where it is easy to be outside and to practice physical distancing. I am not sick, I am not out of money, my children are grown adults and look after themselves. I am not suffering.
Increasingly though I am working with folks who are in deep grief. Their lives are continuing and their anxiety is only increasing. They are worried about schooling their kids, they have lost jobs or been forced to take new ones, exposing them to a higher risk of getting sick. Our government benefits programs are expiring and the hope I had at the beginning of the pandemic, for a compassionate public policy leading to a universal basic income seems to have been high jacked by whatever usual suspects make policies that punish the poor and the marginalized and let the rich ride.
People I know have died from COVID. Others have developed chronic health conditions ranging from hair loss to heart problems. Friends are in the streets in different countries protesting injustices, trying to be heard, trying to grasp ahold of enough power to remake their societies in a just and equitable way. The political rhetoric fuelled by rage, wedge political marketing, creeping fascism and bots has made the democratic commons a toxic, angry, anxious laden space of backlash and retribution.
We are losing our minds.
So how’re ya now? What are you doing to hang on? Are you able to think about what comes next? Are you placing your hope on something? What do you need? What can you offer?
Chris, thank you for writing from the heart, it deeply resonates and I relate. I keep coming back to leaning into this time of uncertainty, this time of grief, of feeling anxious…..The crisis is what is, and may even get worse, I have no control over that. All I have control over is how I respond. So my continous practise these days is to connect with (self) compassion, to be still and let come…..That and a deeply felt belief, that we, will be okay, on an individual & collective level.
This time has brought me such a deep appreciation of what it means to accept being vulnerable and interdependent, to ask for help, offer help, and rely on each other. The hopes for a faster shift toward this at a societal level have been somewhat dashed, but I still feel the promise of how many more of us are intimately familiar with and reinforced in the possibilities of mutual aid, organizing, being in ‘pods’, trusting the power of connection to source and nourish change. Hope persists perversely, the only way it knows how.
Hi Chris,
I write to you from the coast of a small lake in Southern Ontario.
Thanks for this. I’m feeling anxious and frustrated, recognizing the crises that persist and have exacerbated these last six month will not be solved with our existing political system. I have no confidence popular elections (fuelled by commercial media) will lead us to a sustainable future. I feel it is our duty as facilitators to turn up the velocity of change, by demonstrating alternative deliberative democracy best practices. We need to connect and share with networks like never before. We need to raise expectations, evaluate, learn and teach like never before. And I will try, but it’s hard not to feel like we are already too late. But we must try, and I’m thankful for folks like you and the good people we know.
Onward and upward.
Chris, perhaps the absence of a blog since June has made this one a true ‘cracker’! It has so resonated with me in many ways, so thanks for sharing. Also thanks to Miriam for your comment which was so helpful for me right now, reminding me of what really matters!
I’m hanging on by doing some reading of books that have really stimulated new awareness, reflections and actions. I’m hanging on by helping family members get through these difficult times whilst they work form home and look after their young children. I’m hanging on by supporting my aged parents as they consider the need for my father to now go into a care home. I’m hanging on by doing the many necessary small things in life, being grateful for what I have, and then the bigger vision hoping for the oncoming desire for Scotland to become an independent nation and the then ability to work towards a wellbeing and green new deal based economy and society.
Thanks Chris for speaking this.
Hey Chris and Yinz (as they say in Pittsburgh). Smile. It’s a lot! I’m holding a lot of space particularly around race. By Tuesday this week I’d co-hosted three such spaces in one week. It feels deeply satisfying to be engaged, but it all, including COVID and financial insecurity, sure does keep me up at night. Feeling more tired, more stressed, I seek more practices and rituals to provide me with a sense of refuge, to help me regulate my nervous system down, to help me let go of what I cannot change. Grateful for your companionship on this journey, thinking about the return of sea stars in your waters. Hannah